Tag: #blackwomen

The Heaviest Burden

For the nights when our love don’t love us back.

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The heaviest burden

The most urgent concern

Is when tears burn your face from the words of others because 

The worst sounds come from sobs in pillows smothered with covers undercover

Doused in brokenheartedness 

The hurt that our mothers vowed to protect us from

The heaviest burden

When you feel like a burden

unwanted and unappreciated 

Don’t you hate it?

When somebody rather drag you out like last night’s trash just because 

You and your crown are too heavy to lift?

But don’t you hate it even more when

You put your own self in that trash bin?

The heaviest burden

When you feel sorry for yourself and 

You start to tear yourself down just like everyone else did 

As if they really needed help with it

You take in the words and you start to believe 

The alibis and the lies 

Against your spirit 

You can see you falling out of love with yourself so loud and so clear you can hear it

A car crash, a tree fall, a falling apart

Damn, it wasn’t like that from the start

Damn, has an artist ever been more dismissive of her own work

Of her own art?

The shit is taught. And she listened.

The heaviest burden

The rising from the fire

The guilt of a liar that

Only lies to herself 

She needs some help she

Needs some medical attention 

Did I mention that wounds cut the deepest 

From self inflicted

Injury?

Well tell me where to start because

The heaviest burden is me

Somebody tell me where to start because 

The burden is too heavy 

My Room

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It don’t have to hurt if

I stay in here with my thoughts and with

My mind because sometimes

I rather spend time with them because

Sometimes it hurts too much on the outside

It hurts so bad when reality hits me

It hurts and I

I lie and

I say “I’m fine, I’m fine” but the truth is

There’s a very thin line between the lie I tell and the tears and the fears that lie on the inside

It don’t have to hurt if I stay in here

If I stay clear of the news and the television and

If I don’t hear about more Black children gone missin or

No longer livin

If I don’t have to let my cup drain dry from the alibis of people always gettin and never really givin then

Maybe it won’t hurt

If I stay in here I don’t have to be misunderstood and if I stay in here

I could get to know me better because

In here she doesn’t have to be censored or assimilated or inundated with masks or with doubt

In here I could really learn what she’s really all about

Too loud, too dark, too I-don’t-really-look-the-part out there but in here

the part is all mine

And the time is my time, because sometimes there ain’t no time for me on the outside

All the while I reclaim my time while the outside still has the nerve to still say it still ain’t all mine

Corporations make money off the sick

While we all chokin’ out here on air that’s too thick while they tell us that

Global warming “doesn’t really exist” and

We all play the part, but the lies

They really don’t stick

It’s sick

But as the ways of the world smolder outside my door

I look over my shoulder and turn my back to the fire

It’s far too much to bare

It don’t have to hurt

So until the smoke clears

I’ll be in here

We Can’t Afford It

boysittin

We can’t afford it

We’ve been nickeled and dimed far too many times

To make fun of our sisters on the welfare line or

To make fun of the young queens on the payday loan line in a bind

Trying to pay fall tuition in the wintertime

No more change left to spare

There’s no room to instigate and

publicly humiliate our brothers

Behind on child support and

Sitting

On the bench of the court

The same court that pit them

Against their fellow sisters and brothers and their own baby’s mothers

It costs too much

We don’t have enough to share videos

of fights on social media and the news and

Spectate and point at black people like

animals in a zoo

We don’t have enough to plaster photos all over of our women and our girls with no clothes on bending over

over and over and over again

Because the slave master’s check was never enough for us to spend

We can’t afford it

This predicament this

Carefully crafted division

Impedes the vision of our ancestors

The best laid plans of our foremothers and our forefathers

Why are we not bothered enough

by the darkness driving out the light?

Tonight there are torches glowing in the night’s sky

This day is far from 1959

Or is it? Part of the plan?

Black woman

Black man

We don’t stand a chance if

We don’t even take a stand

The piggy bank broke when we turned our backs on each other and

now we’re stuck stealing coins from our sisters and our brothers because

We can’t afford it